Windows Vista and XP Dual Boot

The How, The Why, The Benefits

Posted 07/24/07

Do you want to give Vista a try but at the same time you don’t want to give up on XP? Then dual booting Vista and XP might be a great solution for your dilemma. Before you begin on the instillation process you must make sure you have backed up all of your important data.

In order for Vista to live alongside XP you must create another primary partition on your hard-drive. It is recommended that you use a partitioning program such as Acronis Disk Director rather than XP setup disk which will delete all the data on the disk when creating a new partition. When creating a new partition you should use at least 20 GB of space and possibly more depending on how many programs you wish to install on the new partition. When creating a partition your system will reboot. Then pray while the new partition is being made. If it is successful you will boot up again and be able to see your newly partitioned drive.

Now all you simply have to do is pop in the Vista DVD and run the install. Choose your newly created partition and the install will look very similar to that of XP. Once Vista is installed and your system is restarted you will see a black text screen. This is where you choose which windows you would like to boot. You can either choose “Earlier version of Windows” (XP) or “Microsoft Windows” (Vista) by simply clicking the words.

With this new setup you can have the perks of both Vista and XP. You can now play DX10 games on Vista when you want and then switch back to XP where everything is sure to run great.

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